{"id":6975,"date":"2014-01-06T07:15:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T13:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=6975"},"modified":"2014-01-06T14:21:45","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T20:21:45","slug":"6975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/01\/06\/6975\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Afraid of the War on Pink?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Boys<\/a>I\u2019ve been struck lately by the polarities that sometimes infuse popular feminist debate around gender, childhood, and toys. On multiple fronts.<\/p>\n

CJ Pascoe and Tristan Bridges\u2019 post here last week, controversially titled \u201cStop the War on Pink\u2014Let\u2019s Take a Look at Boys\u2019 Toys,\u201d<\/a> sparked a minor bruhaha in popular feminist circles. In their title, and in their post, Pascoe and Bridges used a rhetorical technique that my colleagues at The OpEd Project<\/a> call \u201cthe refocus.\u201d While it seemed to me that their stance of \u201cenough about pink already\u201d could be read as a foil, and a way into their argument, others, like media studies professor and author Rebecca Hains, rightly took issue. \u00a0\u201cDoes the \u2018War on Pink\u2019 Need to Stop for Boys\u2019 Sakes? No, and Here\u2019s\u00a0Why<\/a>,\u201d the title of a post by Hains, in response, stated.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, as a brief exchange over at Facebook<\/a> made clear, all parties stand on the same side of the issues here and believe boys and girls all <\/i>deserve a wider rainbow of options. We agreed a forum didn\u2019t make sense, since it would consist primarily of head nodding. We may disagree on the effective use of certain rhetorical tactics. But we all agree on a similar flavor of change.<\/p>\n

Still, it stayed with me. As someone obsessed by the way feminist history repeats<\/a>, it got me thinking about the past.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a long history to the so-called boy versus <\/i>girl advocacy in the popular realm. When conservative critic Christina Hoff Sommers came out with The War Against Boys: Ho<\/i><\/a>w Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men <\/i><\/a>in 2001, the very title made me cringe. While willing to be persuaded that boys, in fact, had problems, I saw zero correlation between their issues and \u201cmisguided feminism,\u201d however one defined that phrase. Sommers maintained that the so-called \u201cgirl crisis\u201d (her term) had led to changes in schools, politics, and parenting that had a horrible cost for boys, who allegedly became even more at risk, as a result.\u00a0 Interestingly, the book was reissued in 2013 with the \u201cFeminism\u201d of the subtitle changed to \u201cPolicies\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

But back in 2001, egged on by Sommers\u2019 barb, feminists took the bait. Many responded with what seemed to me the wise yet obvious retort that the war for healthier childhood was not about the girls versus the boys, and that feminists (doh) were not to blame.\u00a0 I was as indignant as the rest that Sommers, who registered as a scholar, had stooped to such a ploy. I remember thinking, did she really believe some of the things she wrote and said? Whether she did or whether she was using rhetoric to magnify her point, for all the attention given her book, it was an effective, if maddening, ruse.<\/p>\n

Much has changed in the 13 years since Sommers\u2019 controversial title first made waves. The field of girls studies has grown exponentially, built on an incredible foundation laid down by the field\u2019s early architects (Girl w\/Pen\u2019s own Susan Baile<\/a>y among them). The field of masculinity studies has deepened and widened, too.\u00a0 In 2014, those advocating for boys and those advocating for girls are no longer in opposition. \u00a0Or at least, we shouldn\u2019t be. Right?<\/p>\n

As is often the case on the Internets, a forum as enriching as it can be problematic, when I find myself agreeing with both \u201csides\u201d of an alleged debate, nodding \u201cyes\u201d to parties who somehow find themselves on opposing divides, my instinct is to bring them together<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Watch for a dialogue between me and Rebecca Hains–<\/a>-as well as more Manly Musings from\u00a0CJ Pascoe<\/a> and Tristan Bridges<\/a>–all coming to this space very soon.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @deborahgirlwpen<\/a>, join me on Facebook,<\/a> and subscribe <\/a>to my quarterly newsletter to keep posted on my coaching workshops and offerings, writings, and talks.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been struck lately by the polarities that sometimes infuse popular feminist debate around gender, childhood, and toys. On multiple fronts. CJ Pascoe and Tristan Bridges\u2019 post here last week, controversially titled \u201cStop the War on Pink\u2014Let\u2019s Take a Look at Boys\u2019 Toys,\u201d sparked a minor bruhaha in popular feminist circles. In their title, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21107],"tags":[25820,26903],"class_list":["post-6975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mama-w-pen","tag-girls-studies","tag-masculinity-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6975"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6993,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions\/6993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}